Fitness: 2022 Summer Shred Challenge Week 1

Image screenshot: Chloe Ting 2022 Summer Shred Challenge

This post is a little different from the ones I usually do, not least because this post is going up on Day 8 of the challenge rather than going live Day 1 and being updated throughout the week. I’m trying something new, I guess? But also the past week has been… exhausting. I am exhausted lol. I exercised a lot over the last week, and I wonder if I maybe overdid it. I felt very inspired to exercise but now my body is just screaming for rest.

Work has been super busy, I also haven’t fully caught up on sleep, I’ve also been distracted and perhaps a little too invested in the Depp v Heard trial, and any free time I’ve had has been spent either exercising or practising piano, which I am very glad to be getting back into these days.

Don’t worry, I don’t think I’ve developed an exercise addiction – I just mean I’ve been walking more. Walking is such good cardio and very underrated, in my opinion. It gives me time to think or clear my head and it’s just nice to be outside in general. So over the past week I’ve been going for about an hour’s walk (almost) every day aside from my Chloe Ting Challenge.

But since I haven’t been updating my progress daily, I’ll just be listing all the workout videos I completed along with any additional exercise I did, and writing a summary at the very end. This one will be shorter! I don’t have the time or mental capacity to write more than that really.

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Fitness: Caroline Girvan IRON Series Week 4

Image credit: Caroline Girvan Facebook

Alrighty! So slight update of my schedule: I’m actually not going to start Chloe’s next challenge until 23rd May because my schedule will be busy for the first half of next week, one of my teammates will be busy for the second half of next week, and our final teammate’s current challenge ends on 21st May. So starting the week after works out perfectly for all of us.

That does mean that I have two weeks left before I start something else… I have already committed to doing week 4 of this IRON series so I’m going to continue, but we’ll see what happens next week. I might take a week off so my body can rest, but I’m also loving working out so much these days that I don’t want to take a week off.

I definitely won’t have time to exercise on 16/17th May, but we’ll see what happens after. I might finish off next week with her Beginner EPIC again, or just pick and choose which 3 IRON week 5 videos that I want to do. Regardless, this week, my schedule will look like this:

MONTUEWEDTHUFRISATSUN
Day 15Day 23Day 17Day 18RestDay 19Rest

Since I’ve already done day 16 during a prior week, I’m going to replace it with next week’s hamstring/glute workout so I can still get my hamstring workout in. Without further ado, let’s get into it!

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Fitness: Caroline Girvan IRON Series Week 3

Image credit: Caroline Girvan Facebook

We are entering my third week on the IRON Series! Except I’m not going to be following Caroline’s schedule for this week either… I had a look at the videos and, though I don’t love the look of any of them, there are only two videos that I absolutely want to replace.

While I was debating on the videos that I wanted to do instead, and I was originally thinking of pulling a couple of videos from days 15-19, but ultimately decided I would like to stick with next week’s schedule as is. Sooo… for the two videos I don’t want to do, I’ll be going back to basics. With Caroline’s Beginner EPIC :D

I still love the Beginner EPIC from what I remember of the two rounds I did of it before. I feel like it really helped push my strength to the next level so I’d like to see if I’ve made any improvement since then. And if not, then I’ll know I need to keep pushing myself even harder.

So this week, my schedule will look like this:

MONTUEWEDTHUFRISATSUN
BE 1BE 2Day 12Day 13RestDay 14Rest

I’m excited to see how this week goes!

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Fitness: Caroline Girvan IRON Series Week 2

Image credit: Caroline Girvan Facebook

Okay, well… we are switching up the schedule this week. I know I had originally said I’d day day 1 on Tuesday, but Caroline just released a new hamstring workout, and I’m here for hamstrings. My hamstrings are non-existent, and I’d like for them to please start existing. Caroline does say to make these our own, so that’s exactly what I’m doing.

So this week, my schedule will look like this:

MONTUEWEDTHUFRISATSUN
Day 5Day 16Day 7Day 8RestDay 9Rest

I don’t plan to change the schedule for next week just yet, but it’s just as well that she released a new hamstring workout because I felt a lot less excited to do this series coming into this week. Maybe it’s my potential ADHD, maybe I’m just feeling mega-weak this week… either way, day 5 just did not jive well with me.

I’m now feeling a little more excited to do tomorrow’s hamstring workout, but had it not been pure discipline for today, I probably would not have bothered to do day 5 at all. I’m not particularly keen on then changes I’m starting to see on my arms (feels like my biceps are getting a bit big while my tricep area is still muscle-less flab).

We’ll see how it goes for the rest of this week. If I’m finding myself just not excited to do the rest of this series then I’ll probably switch to Caroline’s Beginner EPIC or do another Chloe Ting Challenge with my team. Just having that team challenge element was so motivating for me that it absolutely pushed me past any hurdles with motivation.

The best workout is the one that you actually do, so I’ll definitely be prioritising a challenge I know I’ll do over one that might seem “better”, but I don’t actually complete.

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Fitness: Caroline Girvan IRON Series Week 1

Image credit: Caroline Girvan Facebook

Yep! Having finished Chloe Ting’s Get Toned Challenge yesterday, we are finishing up with Caroline Girvan’s IRON Series this week. This is going to be a shorter post because the rest of this week is only 3 workout days long. I’ve decided to amend her schedule a little to better suit my lifestyle. Caroline likes to have a rest day on Thursday and Saturday but, for me, a Friday/Sunday rest schedule works better so that’s what I’ll be going with.

I’ll also be switching some of the workouts depending on the day, because I don’t really want to do the quad workout. I don’t want to be growing my quads anymore to be honest. For now, my tentative schedule will look like this for the next few weeks:

MONTUEWEDTHUFRISATSUN
Day 2Day 3Day 4Rest
Day 5Day 1Day 7Day 8RestDay 9Rest
Day 10Day 11Day 12Day 13RestDay 14Rest

I already took Monday as an extra rest day this week, so we’ll finish up with just one more rest day. The schedule works out so that I still do CG’s full body workout between two rest days. I think Jacky will probably join me for my Saturday workouts as well, and this will be a good way to get us both moving.

Caroline is still in the process of releasing her IRON series but I’ll never catch up so I’m looking forward to following it. I know, what happened to re-doing her Beginner series? Well, she just so happened to launch a new weighted workout series that is reps/sets based and is only 30min long each day. It’s literally exactly what I was looking for, so we’re doing it haha.

Chloe’s new challenge will launch before this one ends so I’ll probably not complete this series, but I can always go back to it. Each workout seems pretty standalone. Without further ado, let’s go!

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